the Che Guevara of the sugar market goes postal on ICE

So, from 25th January, a stop order will only be executed if it's within the "no cancellation range" which, for sugar, is 10 points. If I understand correctly. And there's something about cascading stops not being a Good Thing either, and these may also be cancelled, or not executed. Or something. I'm not stupid, and I know some very bright people, but, you know what? I haven't spoken to a single person who has read through ICE's latest legislation who claims to fully understand it. All you get from reading ICE's webpages on the matter is a mild headache and a sense of impending doom.

So, how does this thing work? If a stop goes, and the market moves more than the NCR defined by ICE, does this mean that you get a fill which is later cancelled by the exchange, or does your computer simply freeze and cancel the order? It's not really clear to me, even after reading through ICE's acronyms and convoluted explanations. Does this mean that a fund doesn't know of it's been stopped out of a position until ICE tells it? Does it mean that a broker or trade house is never sure whether a producer or consumer pricing order has been filled until they're sure it hasn't been filled by someone's stop which may, subsequently, be cancelled?

Who the hell dreamed this one up? I can't believe for a second a decision to limit how stop orders are executed would be of any benefit to the trade, consumers, producers or to the traditional fund players, so I can only assume that the decision has been made at the request of the HFT community who, presumably, think that if anyone's going to move the market 50 points in 25 seconds, it's them and them alone.

No-limit stops and cascading stops aren't something that happened after the advent of electronic trading. They've been around since the beginning of futures markets. It's arguable whether electronic trading is a more efficient medium for executing these orders than was the old open outcry system.

But one thing is clear - the No11 market is writing its rules to suit the HFT community at the expense of all other participants. First, it was the deliberate destruction of price discovery due to the switching off of the implied engine, and now it's the "when is a stop not a stop" debacle-under-construction. Many of those I talk to in the trade no longer touch the market flat-price unless they absolutely have to. Soon it will be the turn of the funds to desert a merket which refuses to give them price protection on the positions they have opened.  Then what will be left? A dying market only traded by computers feeding their orders directly into the exchange servers.

Well, go ahead and kill the market, ICE. Your latest set of rules will be a fitting epitaph for the death of what you created - a global casino in which no human being is capable of understanding the house rules.